Beatrice's Sphere Mitosis
by Rhino7
Summary: Ten minutes trapped underwater and tangled in a reef was not how either Leon or Tifa had envisioned spending the afternoon. Tag-shot for Dante's Tenth Circle and Ascending the Terraces.


**Beatrice's Sphere Mitosis**

**By Rhino7**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts, its characters or storyline. This one-shot is mine. Meh. This is the third sister-shot to my little Divine Comedy trilogy of Leon and Tifa friendship-ness. It takes place after **_**Dante's Tenth Circle**_** and **_**Ascending the Terraces**_**. This is the wrap up, where they finally become friends, closing the chapter on my quippy banter between them, but opening the new chapter of friendly banter! Woot for banter! Even though there isn't a lot of speaking in this…Meh.**

**..:--X--:..**

How he managed to get so tangled in rigging cable off the coast of Port Royale, Leon was sure he'd never know. Nor did he ever really care to; he'd much rather just not be tangled anymore.

The water was unseasonably warm and the salt of it was biting at the open lacerations that the jagged steel had cut into his shins and forearms. Just after impact, he had managed to bust through the windshield of the Gummi and claw out, slicing up his hands in the process, before the water filled the ship completely, trapping him inside.

So he was outside the Gummi, just tied to it because of that stupid rigging cable that Cid said he'd gotten rid of a month ago. And he wasn't just tied to it, because that would have been too easy. No, the damn cables had knotted and weaved themselves around his legs and crept up his torso, latching him against the overheated steel of the ship's nose.

The crash landing and subsequent sinking had been so sudden and disorienting that for thirty seconds, he totally forgot that Lockhart had been in co-pilot with him in the cockpit. The whole situation had been pretty annoying, with her forcing his hand and conning her way into the Gummi with him to Olympus. She had to be part bloodhound, the way she was giving chase after Cloud's latest escapade into the Under World.

Leon thought they were both nuts for that stunt, but when Tifa's dark hair ballooned up beside the submerged wing of the Gummi at the corner of his eye, he swore to himself that he'd never refuse a Gummi ride with her again.

There was no blood, so she'd escaped the carnage of the jagged steel and shattered glass…He'd probably cleared the way with that one, or so his hands and shins were telling him. Her dark eyes widened when she spotted him in his predicament. If his burning lungs hadn't sapped most of his attention, he was sure he would have been extremely embarrassed by the whole thing.

As it was, he settled for struggling afresh against the impossible cable.

Tifa swam over with long strokes, ducking under the heated plating of the wing. Leon felt the Gummi shift under him as it settled against the reef. The overheated nose stung against the bare skin between the waist band of his pants and where his shirt had been rucked up to nearly his shoulder blades. Blood was curling around in a pink cloud around his shredded shins and forearms and palms as he tried to find a weak spot in the cable.

Oh, this was ridiculous.

His lungs were screaming for air and the surface was a good ten feet above their heads. Gagging slightly, he ceased the mindless thrashing in the tangles and settled for just moving one leg, trying to wriggle it out of the mess. Tifa bobbed over to his other leg and started working at the stubborn rigging.

Shaking her head and letting go of his arm, she pushed away and swam for the surface. A stream of bubbles escaped Leon's mouth and he forced his jaws shut, looking around to assess the situation again. His legs were tangled in the cable up to the hips and the angle of the ship was forcing his back against the nose.

Pushing away from the body of the ship, he folded at the waist and grabbed at the cable wrapped around the ankle. The ONE time he doesn't have his knives on him…and the gunblade was still in the hold of the ship. A lot of good it was doing him there.

Tifa descended back into view as Leon found a few inches of slack in the cable. This slack shifting caused the rest of the cable to slide up and push into the deep slide across his shin. More bubbles escaped as Leon gritted his teeth against the pain. She grabbed his shoulder and he straightened. Just for a moment, the way her dark hair was swirling about her head and the way the afternoon sunlight made the water ripples contort across her face, he would have sworn she was Rinoa.

Then she was pulling herself closer and she tilted her head. Before Leon could prepare himself, she'd locked lips with him. His body stiffened in confusion until she started pushing air from her mouth into his. He realized what she was doing and inhaled the proffered oxygen. Withdrawing, she clawed for the surface again. Leon felt the burning in his lungs ease slightly and he folded over to battle the cables again.

He found the slack around his ankle once more and started to work the cable around the heel of his boot. This was taking too damn long. The rigging was too knotted to untangle before he drowned, even with Tifa's underwater emergency breathing…which she could have at least warned him about before laying it on him.

Bloody water distorted his view of the cable and he waved an arm through it to disperse it faster, vision blurring with the incessant stinging of salt water on open wounds. Tifa was back at his level again. As she started to go at the cable on his other leg, he slapped her arm. When she looked at him, pushing her hair away from her eyes, he gestured to the shattered windshield of the Gummi and mouthed 'gunblade' to her, amidst an outburst of bubbles.

She nodded and pushed off the reef, ascending and disappearing into the ship. His chest was tightening as he spent his remaining oxygen untwining the looser folds of cable from his waist and hips. The mass of rigging cable had settled in a mess around one of the chunks of reef that littered the shores of Port Royale. There would be no way for the gunblade to saw through every cable around his legs. It made more sense to slice through the length of cable between his boots and the mass of it around the reef cluster.

Vision blurring by now, Tifa was a blob of black and silver as she swam out of the flooded cockpit, the gunblade in one hand as she stroked down to him once again. Leon straightened himself out and pointed to the lengths of rigging under his boots, anchoring him to the reef with the Gummi at his back. The rest of the cable was loosening around his torso, giving him more freedom away from the Gummi where the cable was attached.

She nodded and handed him the gunblade, heading to the surface again for another breath. The pain in his chest now overpowering the pain in his shredded palms, he gripped the handle of the gunblade and swung it down with the current to glance against the winding cables. Knowing he wouldn't be able to swing and slice with it, he started rocking his arm back and forth, running the blade in a sawing motion across the cables. Tilting the angle of slightly, he leaned into the motion, feeling the blade grinding against the coils.

The Gummi Ship groaned behind him and he twisted around in the water to see that the reef on which the bulk of the ship was resting was crumbling. The ship's nose began to raise a little as the back end was lowered, leveling the craft out. The cable around his chest tightened and he was pulled backwards, his body forced to stretch out straight in the water. His grip on the gunblade faltered at the sudden change in direction but he held onto it.

Tifa was swimming back down, eyes wide at the change as well. Seeing the gunblade still in reach, she stroked over to Leon and hooked an arm around his neck to keep herself anchored. First things first, she breathed into his mouth again. The only good thing about most mouth-to-mouth emergency breathing cases was the fact that usually the victim was unconscious. As it was, Leon could only go through with it and try to make the oxygen last as long as possible.

He lifted the gunblade toward her and she grasped it with both hands, kicking off the nose of the ship and landing on the reef. Leon craned his neck to watch her, back flattened against the incline of the bow of the Gummi. She had found the small dent in the length where he'd started and she started sawing at the cable. He kept his legs still so she could keep her balance straight and he focused instead on getting his other arm free from the cable connected directly to the Gummi.

All in all, it was extremely uncomfortable, being stretched taut, underwater, while the salt attacked the lacerations from the wreck. Leon felt the cable give around his right leg, though there was plenty of it left to keep his right stuck to his left at the knee. Tifa maneuvered onto the other side, sawing at a different angle now.

While she worked, Leon wriggled the twisted cable over his shoulder and ducked his head to the other side of it, gaining another few precious inches of slack. Now he just needed to slide out from the coil and he'd be free from the waist up.

The cable around his legs shuddered as Tifa activated the trigger set into the blade of his sword. The tremor gave the gunblade the extra oomph needed to cut through the remaining cable. A flood of bubbles escaped Tifa's mouth as she pulled back, holding the gunblade with one hand and stroking off the reef with the other.

Leon dropped through the cable that had been wrapped around his torso. The slack coils fell away without a fight and he pushed himself away from the nose of the Gummi. Without the reef to keep the cable around his legs tangled, he was able to kick them off, pulling his legs apart from them and reorienting himself in the water. He gave her a thumb up and she nodded, kicking for the surface. He followed, clawing at the water for purchase and leaving the Gummi crumpled in the reef.

The air was cold and stale and the wind whipped the surface waves against the side of his head as he surfaced, but it was the most delicious breath he'd ever taken. Gasping for air and gagging on water, for a few seconds, his body fought between coughing up water and inhaling oxygen. Tifa was doing likewise a few feet away, bobbing up and down as she kept herself afloat with one arm.

"All r-right?" She coughed.

He nodded, treading water and turning in a circle to get his bearings. "Y-yeah."

Smoke from the flooded thrusters of the ship was still bubbling out of the water behind them, but the shore was roughly 50 feet ahead of them. They both started paddling for the bleached sand of Port Royale's shoreline. His limbs were shaky and numb from deprived oxygen and thrashing around underwater for what was close to five minutes, on top of the salt rendering his raw nerves senseless.

He reached the shallows first, staggering on his hands and knees and still spitting out water as he dragged himself toward the drier sand. Tifa was a few feet to his left, scrapping to her feet and stabbing the gunblade by its tip into the sand before hitting her knees and falling forward on her hands in exhaustion.

Pushing his hair from his eyes, Leon plopped onto the sand in a relative sitting position, lifting his palms and looking at them with a grimace. The skin from the web of his fingers to the joint of his thumb looked like he'd played Hot Hands with Edward Scissorhands. They weren't bleeding anymore, but there were a few stubborn shards of glass wedged in there. His forearms were covered in abrasions and his shins were both scraped up from clawing and kicking his way out of the Gummi in the first place.

Tifa made her way on jelly-legs to where he was and unceremoniously threw herself down on her belly beside him. Her back was heaving as she tried to take in more oxygen than her throat would allow at a time. With her hair covered in sea foam and sand and bunched up at her shoulders, he wasn't sure why he'd thought she looked like Rinoa.

Leon winced and looked away from her, out to the open sea where the waves had all but dissolved any evidence that they'd crashed just ten minutes earlier in the reef. Spitting out water, Tifa pushed herself up to her elbows, twisting around to follow his gaze out to the ocean. It was needless to say Olympus wasn't happening today.

"Next time, I'm driving." She said flatly, getting up on her knees and catching her breath.

Leon frowned and looked from the smoky ocean to her. Stubborn and smart-alec, but she'd saved his life, so he had to give her something. Maybe they could function as friends after all.

"Fine." He grumbled.


End file.
